Videos gave Trotter ‘arousal’ and ‘control’
SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2018
Convicted video voyeur Rick Trotter told detectives in 2016 he covertly used a phone camera to film up the skirts of female victims because it gave him “a sexual arousal” and “a feeling of control.”
“I am a sex addict,” he said in an Aug. 3, 2016, police statement obtained this week by The Commercial Appeal. “I have been seeing my therapist the last two months because it has gotten out of control. This all started when I was 5 years old with my babysitter.”
Trotter, 42, pleaded guilty last month to four misdemeanor counts of video voyeurism and is currently serving a 60-day sentence at the Shelby County Correctional Center. As a condition of his plea, he also is required to register as a nonviolent sex offender.
The popular former public address announcer for the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies admitted filming “upskirt” videos of four female congregants at Downtown Church, where he doubled as worship and music leader.
Though the criminal case involved only victims at the church, Trotter told Memphis police he’d shot perhaps a dozen voyeur videos in diverse settings.
“Can you name the places (where) you have taken these videos?” Lt. Roosevelt Twilley asked.
“Downtown Church office, sanctuary, on an airplane, Chick-fil-A and a grocery store,” Trotter answered.
Though he said he’s struggled with sex addiction all his life, he contended he only began filming women following 2009 news accounts of the arrest of an Illinois man for stalking ESPN reporter Erin Andrews. The man allegedly filmed Andrews undressing through a modified peephole in a Nashville hotel. “It gave me the idea,” Trotter said. A year after that story broke, Trotter was fired by another church, Fellowship Memphis, for placing a camera in a bathroom to film women. Though he lost his job as worship director there, he was not prosecuted then. He then found work at Downtown Church.
Though the Downtown Church victims say Trotter’s 60-day sentence is too light, the former announcer’s attorney, Marty McAfee, said Trotter is paying a heavy price.
“He lost his marriage and he lost his job,” McAfee said. “That sex offender registry is no joke. That’s a real problem if you’re trying to get a job and live.”